Blog - Pervasive despondency about democracy in Africa urges the imperative to strengthen democratic institutions and practices.
"a dead end" in that regard. For Peter Obi, the candidate of the Labour Party in the February presidential election,"transactional politics, disrespect for the rule of law, endemic corruption in the executive, legislature and the judiciary are pulling Nigeria dangerously away from democracy.
Anxiety about the trajectory of democracy in Africa and its evident failure to deliver the hoped-for improvement in the lives of ordinary people is hardly the preserve of Nigerian statesmen. If anything, despondency with democracy, or, to be precise, disgust at its ostensible manipulation for narrow elitist ends, has been a fixture across Africa, particularly where, bucking expectation, throngs of young people have welcomed coup plotters with open arms.
Africans' disenchantment with democracy is not unwarranted. With few exceptions, democratic rule on the continent has been nothing but a continuation of autocracy by other means, a point that many of those who have taken to the streets to express solidarity with the military have been all too eager to emphasize. As periodic elections have become more or less routine across the region , the possibility of substantive change has inversely receded.
Not only that, many African leaders have used the façade of electoralism to perpetuate themselves in power. Five sitting African heads of state for more than three decades each. All, incidentally, are in the process of grooming their sons as successors. Ali Bongo Ondimba, ousted by his own presidential guards last month, succeeded his father, Omar Bongo, who ruled for a total of 41 years. The country's new military leader, Brice Clotaire Oligui Nguema, and the ousted Bongo, are cousins.
The region continues to pay a high price for the ensuing political and economic stasis. Unsurprisingly, those whose votes do not count have been voting with their feet, which is why an estimated twenty thousand African academics and researchers
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